[kaffe] Re: dotnet platform support / gnu config.sub (long)

[Andrew Haley]

Stephen Crawley writes:
 > 
 > jim@kaffe.org said:
 > > Sun has a lot of lawyers, and they've been pretty aggressive than most
 > > about staking their claims on the linguistic turf (so they can sell it
 > > off).
 > 
 > That's a rather twisted interpretation of Sun's use of trademarks, IMO.
 > Another way of interpreting this is that Sun is trying to ensure
 > that third-party Java vendors don't destroy Java's reputation for
 > platform independence by shipping incompatible implementations.

It doesn't matter what their motivation is.  What we do know is that
we can't call our system "Java".  Instead we have to call it something
like "The GNU Compiler for the Java[tm] Programming Language".  As
long as we stick to that, we're OK.

It's useful for us to know that "JVM" is a trademark so we may not use
it for our own work.

 > This is a good thing for everyone ... apart from unscrupulous
 > vendors like Microsoft.
 > 
 > > Because they claim "Java Compatible"(tm) as a trademark, it makes it
 > > hard to use a normal noun+verb sentence to say that we're compatible
 > > with Java -- we are, by most dictionary definitions, but we're not
 > > "Java Compatible"(tm), under Trademark law.  Maybe we can say that
 > > we're interoperable?  :-) 
 > 
 > A dictionary definition of compatible is useless to users of our
 > software because it is too vague.  We cannot plausibly claim our
 > software to be "compatible in all respects" with Sun's Java.  So any
 > claim of compatibility must be qualified in some way to be meaningful.  

Yes.

 > By trademarking "Java Compatible", and restricting its use to
 > implementations that pass the JCK tests, Sun is doing users of Java a
 > big favor.  It prevents shonky vendors from tricking end users with
 > misleading claims of Java compatibility.

All that we have to know is what we may and may not do.  And that
seems to be quite well-defined.

Andrew.